If you guys have a spare 50 US dollars
and you have a Mac mini,
I definitely recommend picking up
this budget dock from Amazon.
As you guys know, I do a lot of editing
and now that I'm primarily editing on a Mac,
I need a few more USB ports
and, of course, an SD card reader.
The other cool thing about this dock
is that it has space for an internal SSD,
which is great for expanding the storage
of your Mac mini,
especially if you've just got the base model
with only 256 gigabytes of internal storage.
I also didn't want to break the bank,
so I set myself a budget of around 60 US dollars,
and when I came across this particular dock,
I had to pull the trigger and check it out.
Spoiler, it works great and I'm going to keep using it.
So if you guys want to purchase your own,
I'll leave a link in the description.
So without further ado,
let's unbox it and set it up
and see how it performs.
So let's take it out and let's have a look
at what we've got.
So as you can see here,
it says it's a USB-C hub with hard drive enclosure
and that is the brand there.
And on the back there's not much.
So let's take it out of the packaging.
And we'll see what we've got here.
Now, this is the space gray color
and my particular Mac mini
is just the normal silver color.
But I don't really mind about the color.
I think it's going to actually look quite cool
with a different color.
But there is it.
As you can see, it's quite small.
You can see some of the ports on the side there.
And then at the back, it just has a USB-C port.
And there's the bottom.
So this is obviously the SSD enclosure.
And if we open this up,
it has a few bits and pieces
so that it looks like a screw
and then we've also got a USB-C to USB-C cable.
So that's going to be how you actually plug it
into the back of the Mac mini.
So what we'll do, first of all,
is we'll try and screw in a SSD here.
Now, I have this old Samsung SSD
that I haven't used for a while.
It's only about 256 gigabytes
but I will be going to pick up a two-terabyte SSD
in the near future.
So this should technically just slide in here like so.
So that is now in there and sitting down.
So if I just pop this back on.
There are some little holes here for screws,
so if you do want to screw that plate down, you can
but I don't really feel the need to do that.
So I think that's pretty much it, guys.
That is the installation process.
So let's slap this onto the Mac mini
and we'll see what we can get.
Okay, guys, so here we have the Mac mini itself.
You can see it's the silver version.
And if we put the dock on top of the Mac,
you can see there's definitely a difference
but honestly, guys,
I actually kind of like the space gray color on the silver.
I think it gives it quite a cool contrast.
And now there's two ways this can go.
So it can either go on the top
or it can go on the bottom.
I don't think it really matters,
although I'd probably have it on the bottom
just because heat and temperatures.
But I think that there looks pretty good.
And now all we've got to do
is just plug in the included USB-C
to USB-C cable.
Now, this is essentially just going to link the dock
to the Mac mini.
So this just plugs in the back USB-C port.
Okay, guys, so as you can see,
we now have the dock set up with the Mac mini.
Now, if we come into Disk Utility on the Mac,
and you can see here under the External section,
we can actually see the SSD.
So what we'll do now is we'll go into the computer screen
and I'll set it up from there.
Okay, guys, so you can see here,
we have a 250-gigabyte external physical volume,
which is currently in the Windows File System.
So this is the SSD we put into the dock.
Now, bear in mind, guys,
this is just an SSD I had laying around.
I'm going to go ahead and get a two-terabyte SSD shortly
to actually use.
So what we're going to do, first of all, though
is we're going to erase this SSD.
We're going to call it Dock SSD, or whatever you want.
And we're going to change it to the Apple File System.
So that's going to work very well with the Mac.
And we're going to erase.
And as you can see there, that process was successful
and we can actually see it up in the corner there.
So there's absolutely no issues with that at the moment
and we have the full 249 gigabytes free.
So what we'll do now is we'll come
and do a Blackmagic Speed Test
and we'll see what kind of speeds we're getting
with this dock and the SSD.
So let's select the target drive,
let's select the Dock SSD.
And let's start.
So as you guys can see there,
we're getting around 285 megabytes per second write speed
and the read speed should be around the same as well,
about 270 to 280.
At the moment, it's coming back at 315.
And as you can see a little bit further down here,
this is going to be totally fine for reading
and writing almost any type of file
or footage that you have.
So you can do pretty much anything
except from some of the 4K, 60 FPS Cinema RAW files
or the 10-bit YUV codecs.
So these types of file are very, very large
and very, very detailed.
99% of people will never even see one.
And if you are the type of person
that does do a lot of editing
in Cinema RAW or 10-bit YUV,
you're probably not going to be using just a normal SSD.
You'll have some kind of Thunderbolt enclosure
that does two terabytes per second transfer rate
or something like that.
But as we can see there, guys,
like for a very, very cheap budget price,
we can instantly expand the storage on the Mac
for almost no money
and we're getting very respectable read and write speeds.
Now, if we plug in an SD card, let's see if this works.
So it's actually got a nice click
when you push it in just to make
that it's sitting correctly,
and as we can see here, guys,
that SD card has come up straightaway
with absolutely no issues
and if we open it up,
you can see all of my files, all of my images there,
absolutely no issues at all.
So guys, I've been playing around with the dock
for a little while now and I have to say,
I am very, very impressed with it.
I've had no issues, no connectivity issues.
It doesn't seem to get warm or anything like that.
None of the drives disconnect either.
As you can see on the front,
there are plenty of ports for connection.
There's several USB 3.0 ports,
a couple of USB 2.0 ports
and the important thing for me
was that it had a micro SD card
and also a full-sized HD card
'cause it's very easy for me
just to plug in my SD card
and just dump all of my footage onto the computer
whenever I'm finished doing a video.
But yeah, apart from that, guys,
I'm very, very happy with it.
It was a really, really budget option as well
and it looks great.
If you guys can, you can get the silver version,
although personally I actually like the space gray version
of the dock with the silver Mac mini.
I think it looks really cool.
It's got a nice contrast
but again, guys, I'll link that in the description.
Definitely do check it out
if you're after a dock with some kind of expanded storage.
Apart from that, guys,
I hope you found this video interesting.
I will be doing more videos on these Mac accessories,
so stay tuned.
Apart from that, I'll catch you in the next one.